Film Forum

France, 1949
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
With Howard Vernon
In French with English subtitles
Approx. 87 minutes. DCP.

Billeted in a village home, “good German” Wehrmacht officer Howard Vernon gets the silent treatment, but still discourses on his deep cultural Francophilia — but there’s a bitter disillusionment in store. 

Presented with support from the Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film

– With –

24 HOURS IN THE LIFE OF A CLOWN
France, 1946
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
With Beby, Jean-Pierre Melville
In French with English subtitles
Approx. 18 mins. DCP.

 Short 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (1946), the great Beby, with Melville narrating his first film.

Reviews

“How stylish can you get? Melville’s first feature film, and already his touch is sure.”
– Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

“An anti-cinematic jewel. Shot on a very tight budget by stellar cinematographer Henri Decaë, and taking place in a single room (in the original author’s house), the film’s austerity sets it apart from not only Melville’s later works but most other films as well… Our senses as viewers are reinvigorated as we realize that we can learn more about a character through the trembling of their hands, and a glance that is refused, than with words. And it’s this bare honesty which not only adds to the film’s emotional depth but allows us to explore what it truly means to be human, making it one of the most subtly powerful and moving films of Melville’s career.”
– Sonya Redi, Screen Slate

“A tribute to the resolve of those who, far too few in Nazi-occupied Europe, refused to comply with the creeping normalization of brutality in the everyday. Silence, usually associated with acquiescence, in Melville’s film acquires a stoic quality voicing the repudiation of a political disease that cannot be possibly cured, only eliminated.”
– Mubi

“REMARKABLE!”
– Vogue